


On Being Death and Cheating Death

by Pic_Akai



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 03:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10822635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pic_Akai/pseuds/Pic_Akai
Summary: Logan sees a lot of death, but he's never allowed to keep it. This is just what it might be like to live like that.





	On Being Death and Cheating Death

**Author's Note:**

> This could be set really any time between X-Men and before Logan.

Sometimes, everyone is dead.

It's a fact that keeps coming back to Logan, even if he doesn't remember all the times it's happened. He's been able to piece together enough from his fragmented memories, deliberately aggravating teasers from Sabretooth and truncated stories from a lot of other people to know that there have been many times when everyone was dead.

Except, of course, for him, because even when he dies he's not dead. Just in stasis for a short while, as his internal organs remember how to be and then how to work, till there's a central nervous system up and running to send messages or a fully-grown heart to pump the blood that's getting generated with each beat. Oftentimes he feels like some sort of electrical circuit with one (or two or seventy nine) of the elements getting yanked out and then replaced.

He stands now, in a(nother) battlefield, former comrades and enemies alike scattered around, and tries to think of people who aren't dead. He can only come up with abstracts ( _there are billions of people in the world_ or uncertainties ( _the woman that served me coffee this morning, she's probably not dead_ ). Even when his mind tells him that _everyone_ is a very definite term, and very unlikely to be true, it's hard to believe that when all he can smell and see is death.

He hears a gurgling sound. He jumps before he realises, kneels on the ground next to the man it came from. Doesn't see his uniform, if he's recognisably mutant or not, just knows he's trying to cough up blood and isn't quite managing it. Logan's heart leaps and then drops at the next beat, because this isn't life, it's just soon-to-be-death, and the merciful thing to do is hurry it up. He brings out the claws. The man opens his eyes at the sound of them unsheathing, widens them at the sight, and Logan doesn't let him worry much longer about what they mean. One more death, painted vivid red.

He'd asked Cyclops, once, tired and would've been drunk if it were possible, if blood bothered him. Cyclops gave him an expression that asked, "Are you for real?" and Logan said, "I mean, you're so eager for me to kick your ass I assumed you had some sort of kink," to take the conversation back to familiar territory. What he really wanted to know was if Cyclops had the same visceral response, nothing that could be named with a word or a feeling really, just that little frisson that went through him, because he got it every time he saw that same shade of red, except Cyclops saw everything in red, so maybe it wasn't the same for him. Logan doesn't know because he wasn't tired enough to admit someone could probably get the jump on him by surprising him with a red blanket like some dumb bull, and now he won't know because Cyclops is one more name on the long list of dead.

He's tired now, and he wants it to be over. He thinks he might try it, death, and he lies down next to the last of these fighters and closes his eyes. He wonders if they are thinking anything, now they're dead. He tries to imagine dead thoughts, but all he knows are this-is-gonna-hurt-to-regrow thoughts and holy-shit-this-fucking-hurts thoughts. A crow flies overhead, startles him with its cry, and he realises he's lying in what will soon become a buffet. That's not the thought of a dead man.

Being dead is harder than it looks. He sits up. Everyone is still dead, and he is still frustratingly alive. And the next step is always, whether it's now or next week or in six months' time, finding some more alive people and being with them until they die too.

It's not so bad when they go one by one, or a few at a time. It still hurts, sure, whether because he liked them or because he was their cause of death, but with other people around he can see life is something else other than pain. Logan wonders how many people have their cause of death as Wolverine, like he's some kind of nasty virus that targets people with guns or low expectations. He can't even take a guess.

And sometimes, partly because of that virus, everyone is dead. Except for him, the virus that keeps on living to kill another day.

This time he sits with the dead until it's long past cold and long past night, and only when he can pretend they are sleeping does he get up and start the walk back to life. He will go to a bed and fall asleep and when he wakes up there will be life around him, and everyone won't be dead any more.

Until next time.


End file.
